Hogs host Warhawks in non-conference action

NCAA Football Betting Lines

09/08/2010 - Little Rock, AR (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The 14th-ranked Arkansas Razorbacks of the SEC will attempt to knock off the UL-Monroe Warhawks, a team from the Sun Belt Conference set to open its season.

In December, ULM announced Todd Berry as the program's 14th head coach. Berry, who was the program's offensive coordinator from 2004-05, spent the last three seasons calling plays at UNLV. He inherits a club that is in a rebuilding mode, as the Warhawks split their 12 games a year ago. Few starters return on defense for ULM, and while the offense is a bit more experienced, there is no doubt that the squad enters this opener as a huge underdog.

As for Arkansas, it began the campaign with a 44-3 thrashing of Tennessee Tech, an FCS squad.

"I like the way we came out of halftime, because we started to settle down and run the ball better," said coach Bobby Petrino after the triumph.

Petrino is in his third year at the helm at Arkansas and has obviously made an impact in a short time considering the team came into the season with its highest ranking since 1990. The Razorbacks went 8-5 overall in 2009, including posting their first bowl victory since 2003, a 20-17 win over East Carolina in the Liberty Bowl.

Arkansas has won all eight of its previous meetings with UL-Monroe, the most recent of which took place in 2008.

It will be interesting to see who starts and finished the game at quarterback for ULM. Trey Revell was the starter last season and ranked third in the Sun Belt in passing efficiency. The 6-4, 222-pound Revell is a dual threat, throwing for 1,739 yards and rushing for 311 more last year, but a late-season slump and thumb injury has opened the door for redshirt freshman Kolton Browning. The frosh showed enough in the spring to be considered the lead candidate.

"This is pretty much a quarterback driven offense and it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on those guys intellectually in what we are asking the quarterback to do, in relation to what they have done in the past," said Berry.

The key player for the ULM offense is tailback Frank Goodin, who is less than 900 yards shy of becoming the program's all-time leading rusher. The 5-9, 211- pound Goodin earned Second Team All-SBC honors a season ago, rushing for 1,126 yards and 13 touchdowns.

Using a 3-3-5 scheme, ULM boasted one of the best defensive units in the Sun Belt last season and ranked 44th nationally in total defense (347.0 ypg). Seven starters are now gone, leaving the Warhawks with a major rebuilding project.

"We don't care who plays, we are going to put the best players out on the field based on what fits our system," stated Berry.

The Warhawks welcome back only a single starter along the defensive line, but he is a good one in Troy Evans. Only one starter returns to the linebacking corps as well, but the secondary is a little more settled with two starters and some experienced depth welcomed back. Safety Darius Prelow has all-league potential and he started to emerge as a force last season.

Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett began his 2010 Heisman campaign in style against Tennessee Tech last weekend, completing 21-of-24 passes for 301 yards and three touchdowns.

"The first win is always the toughest one," said Mallett. "You never know what to expect the first game out. Tennessee Tech did some things well in the first half, but we were able to adjust in the second half and played really good defense."

Ronnie Wingo Jr., Dennis Johnson and Broderick Green each had a score on the ground while Joe Adams finished the game with six catches for 138 yards and two touchdowns. Arkansas totaled 519 yards of offense in the clash, but the level of competition obviously wasn't up to SEC standards.

Defensively, Arkansas limited Tennessee Tech to 79 rushing yards on 43 carries, an impressive showing by any standards. The pass defense was solid as well, allowing just a 50 percent completion rating. While the Razorbacks did fail to come up with a single takeaway, they posted a pair of sacks and battled for four quarters.

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SPORTS BETTING: NFL Football Sportsbook Betting

NFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.


That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal.

A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon."

It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed.

The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha.

So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games."

Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal.

Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Seriously.

The NFL's problem, when it comes to the gambling world, isn't hypocrisy, it's worse: The bosses lack vision. That's why the league is picking unwinnable fights in Delaware and taking pot shots from critics after making smart sponsorship deals. Roger Goodell and his gang are acting and thinking locally rather than globally, which is rare for them, especially compared to their professional (and amateur) counterparts.

The NBA held its All Star game in Las Vegas and David Stern's kingdom didn't crumble (although the town did bring plenty of players to their knees.) I'd say it's 6 to 5 and pick 'em that Lebron will make a road swing through Sin City before his career is over.

Even the NCAA College Football Betting is more progressive on this issue than the NFL. Several years ago Rachel Newman Baker, college sports' gambling czar, opened a dialogue with Vegas bookmakers to learn about how they do business. She's visited Nevada sports books, studied their operations and listened to how they regulate action. Now she knows she can expect a call from bookmakers, who lose money when sports are fixed, if they think something sketchy is going on in NCAA games. She's not in favor of sports betting, but, as she once told me, "I know it's not going away, either."

The NFL can't seem to accept that. And until it can find peace with the idea, it'll get flack, even when it's right.

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